Accenture announced a strategic investment in environmental, social and governance (ESG) data and insights provider Arabesque S-Ray GmbH through Accenture Ventures.
Accenture’s (ACN) Chief Responsibility Officer and Global sustainability Services Lead, Peter Lacy, said, “Sustainability transformation must be both technology driven and linked to value to be successful. Creating shareholder value, while also tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges, requires rewiring the global economy with new levels of data, insights, and action.”
Lacy added, “We are pleased to expand our relationship with Arabesque S-Ray to help our clients lead with better decision making, more informed investment prioritization, and accelerated realization of overall business value from their sustainability efforts, goals, and ambitions.”
The investment will be focused on generating new tools and services for studying and reporting objective measures for non-financial performance and ESG data. Accenture will gain access to Arabesque’s solutions and analysis of ESG metrics to strengthen its existing sustainability capabilities.
Notably, Arabesque makes use of more than 4 million ESG data points drawn from more than 30,000 sources every day to derive key and actionable insights.
Arabesque S-Ray CEO Dr. Daniel Klier said, “The demand for access to and analysis of ESG data has only been increasing. We are excited to expand our working relationship with Accenture, and to offer more companies around the world the ability to gain insights into their sustainability efforts and drive real success together.” (See Accenture stock analysis on TipRanks)
On March 15, Stifel Nicolaus analyst David Grossman reiterated a Buy rating on the stock and maintained a price target of $300 (13.5% upside potential).
Grossman said, “Accenture has underperformed the S&P500 by nearly 600 basis points since its last report, perhaps reflecting market rotation into more cycle/value-oriented names. We view this as a best in class low volatility core asset, which should always be bought/sold opportunistically.”
Turning to the rest of the Street, the stock has a Moderate Buy consensus rating alongside an average analyst price target of $286.92 (8.6% upside potential), based on 7 Buys and 5 Holds. Shares have rallied about 67.1% over the past year.
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